Queen of Limbs
by Yoshiyuki Ly
Summary: Repost. Stylized, succinct novelization of the movie. Abstract and fluid, to the point. A nod to Radiohead's "King of Limbs" album. Nina/Lily.
1. Bloom

**Disclaimer – **I don't own Black Swan. Visceral/sexual/stylized writing is my forte. I wrote this while listening to the movie's soundtrack on my PS3 and Radiohead's latest album, _The King of Limbs, _simultaneously on my laptop. The harmony blew my mind.

Reviews are welcome.

_bloom. natural. embrace, accept. _

White swans have no say in the matter—Nina must flourish, soon. Her dream, her spotlight, is photosynthesis.

Nina is poised, blossoming her wings. Desire poisons her capacity for error. What she cannot see is the venom. She takes a slow breath, all-encompassing, and it stings her chest. Her obsession is manifest in this hallucination of night. Night encloses her; the light follows. The light holds her hands, her arms, her legs. Light pivots her feet, maintains her head steady as she turns.

Luminescence reigns supreme. It plays her, strings her; threads Nina as it wishes. Darkness shape-shifts into her fears. Her innocence stitches to the ground—the roots of issue. She doesn't notice.

To be a queen requires sacrifice. A sacrifice she understands not, and is content to ignore. Oblivious to the threats of oblivion in such talent, Nina dances. Wide is the expanse of her endowments. Optimism is not her ignorance. Blindness. Blinded by the light forever guiding her. Confusion is manifest in the vines veining from the stitches, finding her. An avian of dark looms, following her. Its presence is marked erroneous. A demon, haunting—not a lesson, nor amnesty for Nina's purity. Virgin misapprehension.

Concentration grows dull beneath the cone of light. A better alternative: shape the light, shape the dark, and run loose. Ignore the threat, ignore the threat. Nina can't ignore what she feels is her downfall. Downfall is as much destruction as rise is restoration—she knows better. The threat is an illusion. This is but a dream, a requiem, a dream; a mass, a funeral. Later, déjà vu.

Nina does not stop. The growth is immaculate, she feels, so tangible. Running away is not the same as solace. They cannot compare. She continues, she concentrates, she consecrates her will through her fear. The rising is not in the form of a sun, but a looming night that never retreats. Forever approaching, just as the black swan does. It won't stop. It can't. Can't. Won't. Alone, she cannot conquer. Alone, she is Nina.

Nina is afraid. The recession is messy, she sees, so real. Her reverie routine falters. She has no control. She dances away from what she needs. She leaves what she needs. Leaves it, abandons it. She wants something to save her—her own skill cannot. Embracing this menace is beyond her. She can't, she won't. She follows it following her. Nina does not remember how it feels to float along in the ambiguity of imagined and genuine. Static is heavy in her eyes, in her steps, her movements. Heavy; ominous.

The black swan shadows Nina. Shadows her, shadows her, shadows, shadows, shadows; follows, follows, following; swallowing, swallowing, swallow; wallow she does, wallow she does.

Miscommunication, miscommunication, miss communication. Audible range: zero. Misconstruction, misconstruction, miss construction. She cannot tell her body to repair the damage its done to her expectations.

Fear is happenstance: her faltering stance. Grace is as fluid as a rain of nails, as the light shining down on Nina, following her. The climax is sudden and sharp, the ache in her limbs steep and soaring. Reality returns, waking her.


	2. Mourning

_mourning the beginning of the end._

When Nina wakes in the morning, she is dizzy with recollection. She inhales her flighty balance, recycling it within; exhaling equilibrium disguised effective. Her day is the same, peppered with anticipation.

Ballet calls, ballet cries, ballet cripples. Nina dances among the group, desiring notice. Thomas is present this session. A New Season. A New Swan Queen. He scrutinizes with eyes trained to see, not look. Nerves trickle down her skin: sheen sweat salt. She shines. Yet Thomas does not touch her with those two digits: choosing, deceiving. His choices smear those girls smug.

When he is near, her heart does not stay still. It curves as she does, stretches as she does. Nina watches him. Her muscles strain from pressure and pain. She irons them, steaming with stress. That anxiety, ever-present in her face, knows no bounds.

When Thomas does not touch her, she questions her earlier dream. Perhaps it was not as she thought. It was as she wished. It is nothing, when Thomas calls attention, signaling the end. Nina stops, wishing to collapse in regret. Until, it is made known, that Thomas' touch is not what she needed.

Quite the opposite.

She is chosen.

Nina feels like a leaf in the wind. Flying in the zephyr of joy, with no intention of returning to the tree she has escaped from.

She soon learns that freedom of movement, freedom of limbs, is what Thomas desires. A simile is not close enough, not enough. A human metaphor for grace and ability is what she needs to be. Desire alone is not skill enough to grasp. Belief in a desire is not desire enough.

Nina recesses. Her mother appears not to notice. Distracted, distracted, ever-distracted. Gone were the days of practicing her talent, her trade. Another aspect of dance she considers too late. She prays for time. Something must reach her. She is pure, she is fair. All is possible to pass her way. Her bedroom is unsophisticated, allowing entry to anything she might need. A new skill, she prays, will find its way—there is no visible darkness within or around her for the necessary to lose its way.

In the mean time, she relies on the light.

Competition stifles. Nina is an outcast within the group of like-talented girls. Nina is an outcast within herself. Her way of life and means of expression does not impress Thomas with consistency. Only half, he says, only half. He needs both halves. Talent and magnificence must be whole.

Nina frets, Nina worries. Her performance is not what Thomas wants. He sees half, and does not look for the rest. If it is not apparent, he does not see. Nina wonders what is behind those eyes, analyzing her. Thomas must be looking for something if he analyzes. There must be more, if Thomas calculates.

Hope is a possibility—not a thing to dissect.

Insecurities hail down. She is not sensual enough, not free enough. Though Nina lives in the light, it means nothing for the whole routine. Weaving between light and dark, then becoming one—both: she cannot fathom it.

Somewhere, she gives up.

Somewhere, she gives down.

The dichotomy produces hope, somewhere in between. It is not enough for security. Having lived so long as but one being, she struggles.

Nina has an itching feeling she has killed herself by considering the role she wants.


	3. Feral

_feral. carnal. high on the lows. there is no need to worry. nothing is real other than what one feels. _

Mixed signals.

Nina's body signals stagnation in her stagnating routine. Routine is no longer mere routine. Each attempt: different. Each reaction: one. Thomas is disappointed. Thomas is glad. The other girls watch Nina's every move. Nina is not as fluid as her errors as the black swan. What she does not achieve helps her to secure her role as the Swan Queen. She practices precision and never achieves it. She bites the lips that feed her and never achieves them. Neither affect her—neither the precision she once believed in, nor Thomas' lips. She considers herself…

Formalities hide informalities. Talks of success wash away in the alcohol. Threats of demise brainwash Nina. The old prima ballerina presents forewarning. Venturing to Thomas' home unsettles her. Nina is not aware of her mother, not like before. Nina wonders if she makes up the image of a flower, a Lily, with the sensuality of the black swan. The scratching, the worrying. Her mother worries more than ever.

Masturbation presents an enigma. Nina did not feel before, for there was no gain in learning her own body. She feels now, due to the suggestion. There is dryness in softness, in such small spaces. There is velvet, there is unknown. Black objectivity blinds her. Nina instead searches in the white light of pleasure soaking her lungs and throat. Soaking it enough to leave a shallow pool. Shallow breaths, increasing. She feels, she feels naught. She feels, she tunes it out. Concentration cannot co-exist in this moment.

In thinking to let go, she moves her hand as if to stop. Fingers roam in protest. Rebellion spurs her. She thinks of no one, except Thomas. Thomas will be sure to notice the difference in her routine should she do this. Lily will notice. Nina's body notices the extraneous strangeness of this act.

A crown, engorged, wet, being probed and stroked. A Swan Queen must stroke her crown with the pirouettes of self-seduction in dance. Her crown is wet from fluids not unlike sweat from the lights, from the crowd—from the morning light, from the stuffed animals. Probed by the presence of others in the world, she continues, unabashed. Stroked and stroked, she strokes again to remember the repetition. Flowing blood throbs, aches—Nina cannot remember that her hand moves.

Arching is natural. This must be natural. This must be what she lacks. This, this nothing, this void. Void of worries, void of troubles. The Void is light, it is dark, it is her body. Nina rises to a full capacity of being. She rises on the ramp, stares beyond the crowd; sees herself dying. The small death is the act of falling—the interpretation is over.

The dream is over. Nina is still in her room.

A new dream must begin. Her mother sleeps on a chair in the same room.


End file.
